


Bright Blue City Lights

by revengeandotherdrugs



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reincarnation, Suicide Attempt, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-31
Updated: 2013-10-31
Packaged: 2017-12-31 00:44:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1025336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revengeandotherdrugs/pseuds/revengeandotherdrugs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two thousand and fifty years he's waited, never quite living, only waiting. waiting for his king to return.<br/>Two thousand and fifty years is too much.... he could do it, he thinks, and then they'd be together again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bright Blue City Lights

**Author's Note:**

> Un-betaed. All mistakes are mine, don't kill me, please and thank you.

There were ghosts in the mountains, both physical ones and the ones inside his head. Merlin could feel them, the ghosts of back when this place was still Albion, back when the city that he could see below him was Camelot… back so long ago that most people dismissed it as myth.  
He sat himself down on a little outcrop of rock looking over the city. It was one of his favorite places to come, the city looked so alive below him, so alive but yet dead to him.  
The little lights that he had come to associate with humanity twinkled in and out of existence below him, bright blue stars of fake fire and meaningless existences that he loved and despised in equal measure.  
The ghosts were coming closer, like they always did here. The dormant, shriveled spark of his useless gift seemed to call out to the last vestiges of the old magic that still clung to these hills, too stubborn and deep seated to let go even after all this time. A bit like Merlin it would seem… thousands of years and he always came back. Always came back to Camelot, always came back for the past that never was, always came back for the king that was never there.  
He had done his waiting, hadn’t he? He had suffered enough at the hands of this world, he had seen two thousand and fifty years, he was tired and he wanted to go home… he wanted to go home.  
There was no home anymore… there was only this… this city with its blue lights and thousands of people that were not his king, not the person he had waited this two thousand and fifty years for.  
Sometimes if he squinted he could imagine the towers and turrets of Camelot castle formed out of light superimposed on the skyline, but instead of making him feel better it always made him sadder. It reminded him of the insurmountable distance between him and his home. A distance that if he could, he would reverse, and live those two thousand and fifty years backwards again just to go home.  
The tears that never let him alone in the presence of the ghosts slid softly and almost apologetically down his cheeks. He didn’t swipe them away, but let them glitter for a moment before falling, little twin stars.  
He was so tired and he wanted to go…home.  
The bottles were in his pocket, they had been for years, but every time he reached for them he thought of his king and he would freeze, the poison halfway to his lips.  
“don’t ever change”  
But he was tired and he wanted to go home.  
Arthur was never coming back, Camelot was never coming back, the magic was never coming back… with nothing left of that there was nothing left of him.  
With a steady hand he took the bottle out of his pocket and opened the lid.  
He wanted to go home… he wanted to see Arthur he wanted to go home.  
In one smooth motion he downed the poison. It burned his throat and made his stomach churn, the first thing he had felt in years.  
He smiled a little when he thought of the other poison he had once drunk for Arthur in the first weeks they had ever known each other… it was almost like coming full circle.  
He sat back against a tree and watched the bright blue lights of the city that was no longer Camelot fade out as the poison took over his body. He was going home.

“Merlin…. Merlin…”  
It was the last of the ghosts, circling about his head, calling his name in Arthurs voice, lodging itself in his eardrums and dragging him back… he didn’t want to go back, he wanted to go home  
“Merlin… don’t you be dead…”  
There were hands in his hair, on his face, he wished the ghosts away, but they came back stronger than ever.  
“Merlin……… please”  
He cracked open his eyes, the poison his his body making it difficult to do even such a simple thing as that.  
Arthur………. He looked the same as he had when he had passed into Avalon, his eyes held Merlin’s in a way that Merlin had ached for for that eternity. It was Arthur…He had done it, he’d passed through into Avalon and he was with Arthur again. He smiled.  
“I’ve done it” his voice was ragged with disuse.  
“oh gods Merlin…” Arthur’s voice broke, one tiny tear tracing down his cheek, he brought Merlin’s hand to his cheek and just held it there. Merlin melted against the feeling.  
“I was so alone and then I followed your light and I thought you were dead and….. I don’t know what I would’ve done…”  
“… thought you were dead…”  
“Youre real…” he almost daren’t speak those words aloud  
Arthur nodded, pulling Merlin upright and holding him against him. He was still on the outcrop over the city, the little lights of humanity still twinkled and glowed but Arthur was there, pressed up against him…  
“You’re real!”  
He speant a long moment just staring, staring at this man whom he thought he would never see again. The soft curvature of his lips, the defined plane of his jaw, the soft way his fringe fell over his forehead in a little crescent of blond hair, the indescribable look in those sapphire eyes, shining with something rather like tears.  
“two thousand and fifty years” he whispered, collapsing against the very real heat of the man he had waited a million lifetimes for.  
Arthur gathered him in close; Merlin felt like a wounded bird, too light and brittle with his heartbeat thin and erratic and tired against Arthur’s strong, steady, alive one.  
“Never again, never again” he promised.  
Merlin let out a small quiet sob; burying his face in the worn fabric of Arthur’s coat, trying to convince himself of reality. That Arthur was there, he was there, he was real and alive and Merlin wasn’t alone any longer.  
“my lionheart” Arthur whispered, planting a soft kiss on Merlin’s temple as the tears ran, unbidden, down the king’s face  
Merlin wept into Arthur’s chest. All the love and loneliness bursting forth at once; Arthur was real, tangible and alive as he stroked Merlin’s hair and held him close as his broken sorcerer shook with the force of his sobs.  
“iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou” Merlin mumbled between sobs, gripping on to Arthur like a drowning man, afraid that at any moment he would disappear again. Arthur held on just as tight, tears softly sliding down his face at the thought of Merlin’s pain that he could only begin to comprehend.  
After a long while Merlin looked up into his king’s face; tear tracks glittered on Arthur’s cheeks lending him an almost ethereal quality. His eyes sparkled like sapphires in the blue light from the living city below.  
Merlin stretched upwards and mashed their lips together, gasping into it like he was a drowning man starved for air. Hands tangled in his hair as Arthur kissed him back; tongue and teeth and sloppy perfection that Merlin ached for. Lips on lips, tongue on tongue, the taste, smell and touch of Arthur almost too much to bear. He was like a sun, too bright to look at, too hot to touch but Merlin clung to him like a life raft; his king his lord the other side to his coin.  
They slowed a little, deepening the kisses, savoring the feeling of each other; Merlin running his hands over the curves and contours of Arthur’s face, re-memorizing them with his fingers and his lips, tracing Arthur’s jaw line with his fingertips, stubble scratchy and real against his skin.  
“you have no idea how much…” Merlin pressed his forehead against Arthur’s “every day I would look for you… and every day you weren’t there”  
“but I’m here now” Arthur said, gripping Merlin’s chin and pushing their lips together as if to prove his point.  
“you’re here now”  
There was a space where nether man spoke, they just watched each other, wordless in the presence of feelings that they could not express.  
The sun was coming up over the city that once was Camelot, golden spears tearing at the darkness and shredding it off like paint. Life below began to stir as Merlin felt the last of the poison slip away. He leaned back against Arthur’s chest and listened to his heartbeat. Arthur wrapped his arms around Merlin’s slight shoulders and held him close.  
The last of the streetlights were shutting off, their blue making way for the blue of the sky that signaled a new morning, a new life maybe… Arthur was here, he was real and alive… Merlin was home.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a bit of an overload of feels (if you couldn't tell) and listening to King and Lionheart on repeat wasn't helping... so I wrote this. I hope you enjoyed (or at least didn't feel like burning your eyes because of it) and please pardon my abuse of semi-colons, I'm horrible at grammar.


End file.
